Air Force Certifies Falcon Heavy, Awards SpaceX AFSPC-52 Launch

Huge news:

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX), Hawthorne, California, has been awarded a $130,000,000 firm-fixed-price contract, for launch services to deliver the Air Force Space Command-52 satellite to its intended orbit. This launch service contract will include launch vehicle production and mission, as well as integration, launch operations and spaceflight worthiness activities. Work will be performed in Hawthorne, California; Kennedy Space Center, Florida; and McGregor, Texas, and is expected to be completed by September 2020. This award is the result of a competitive acquisition, and two proposals were received. Fiscal 2018 space procurement funds in the amount of $130,000,000 will be obligated at the time of award.

In the Instructions to Offerors (PDF, 858KB), we can see a bit about the performance needed for AFSPC-52:

…the Offeror may utilize the reference orbit for calculations (27°, 6,350kg to a GTO of at least 35,188km X 185km).

That’s well within the performance of an expended Falcon 9, so this is exactly one of those scenarios predicted for Falcon Heavy’s use: flying a recoverable Falcon Heavy instead of an expended Falcon 9.

As far as the other bid the Air Force received, ULA’s RocketBuilder says that reference orbit could be flown with an Atlas V 521 (and even 421 if the payload doesn’t need all 5 meters of fairing diameter).

SpaceX didn’t win this award with as much of a price gap as you’d think.